The kitchen has become my best friend and my enemy. I’ve been baking desserts for the next Easy Weekly Meals cookbook Moms on the Go. And I’ve found that making something for your personal use is a bit different than doing something for a published book. When you’re on your own, you may not care if your cookies get a little burned on the edges, if the chocolate cake doesn’t rise as high as you’d like, or the granola bars just will not stick together. As long as it tastes good, right?But when you photograph something for a cookbook, you want it to look great. “A picture is worth a thousand words” is terrific if you have a beautiful picture. If the subject matter looks like last week’s garbage, that’s not so good.Part of the problem is being creative. Changing flavors, adding in extra ingredients, substituting something healthier. When I experiment with a recipe, I’m just mixing ingredients together. It’s fun to see how butter and sugar get creamy, how adding in eggs makes a batter silky, how the flour makes it thicker. I love the textures of fruit and nuts, the soft slide of butter on my hands when I grease a cookie sheet, the molten goodness of melted chocolate. I see the end result in my head when these ingredients come together – chocolate chip cookies, buttery pound cake, cheesecake with caramel swirls. I can see the colors and textures, smell the chocolate and vanilla and melted butter, taste the cream or the crunch or the sweet.

But sometimes I put in too much flour or not enough sugar. Sometimes I fail. Irritation sprawls on my right shoulder and hisses in my ear while I’m baking.“You don’t know what you’re doing. You can’t put that in. It won’t work.”Confidence sits on the left and calmly whispers, “You’re fine. Go ahead.”Sadly, Irritation wins a lot. And did I mention their friends Frustration, Disappointment, and Defeat?

Baking and writing share important elements – they’re both a journey with an intended result. My goal in baking is a tasty, beautiful end product. Writing is the same. Making thoughts into ideas, shaping words into description, giving life to vision. You want to end up with a good story. Characters people care about. A goal or purpose that matters. Give your ideas wings. Let them take flight and grow and transform. Give them freedom to journey on a road less traveled. Rein them in when they get too chaotic. Imbue them with spirit and independence. And add caution and patience for balance. You may have some interludes with Irritation and Frustration. When you throw in too many adverbs or get lost in exposition, they may pounce on you with glee. Your internal critic can be awfully loud sometimes. But believe in Confidence and go ahead. Chart your journey and see what obstacles lie ahead. The greater the conflict, the more interesting the story. Your first draft may be horrible, like my banana egg rolls. Great idea, but they would not work out. So you tweak, you fine tune, you edit and you rewrite. You fail a little and you try again. And you keep trying until it turns out the way you want.

The 2012 Olympics ended last month and the US won more medals than any other country. Go USA! Each of those athletes trained for years to compete against the best. They all visualized what they wanted to accomplish. See that end result in your mind and the battle’s half won. Just keep moving toward the finish line, one word at a time.Track image courtesy of Kayrie from Morguefile.com

Today we continue our discussion with Wendy Watkins, author of The Joy Factor Recipe Book, the way to achieve more joy in your life. Nanette: You quote, “The only thing constant in life is change,” yet a lot of people are afraid of change. Is there an easy way for people to make changes in their lives? Wendy: You are right, no one loves change. I notice my own love/hate relationship with change on a regular basis. An easier way to embrace change is to first connect with the benefit(s) the change will bring you. As you visualize the benefits, it then becomes easier to integrate the baby steps that will help you to shift your behavior. When my husband Matt told me I had to quit smoking cigarettes many years ago, a habit I found both delicious and disgusting, I resisted. I don’t love when people tell me what to do and quitting a nicotine addiction is much easier said than done. I connected with the benefits that quitting would have on my relationship—health and wallet. As those became clear, it became more important to me. From there, I started to affirm I prefer health, I prefer health when I was smoking and even when I was not. After about six weeks of affirming, I quit smoking and have not had another cigarette in over seven years. Change happens with intention and patience.Nanette: You talk about not being good enough and your struggle to be your real self. So many people worry that they won’t fit in. What advice can you give someone who wants to stand out but isn’t sure how?

Wendy: It all starts with loving yourself the way you are and then starting to make the changes that you desire. Louise Hay’s teaching taught me that twenty-five years ago and I still practice it to this day. For others to accept you and see you as you want to be seen, it starts with you accepting you and then seeing yourself the way you want to be seen. From there, the right people and resources will show up to help you craft the outside into alignment with your gorgeous inner self.

Nanette: The four aspects of Self-Care are physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Which one is the most difficult? Wendy: The mental and emotional are most challenging. Mental, because most people do not pay attention to what they read and watch, so they can poison themselves with negativity and not realize why they feel so bad or have a hard time creating a life they love. The emotional aspect is directly connected to “our thoughts create our feelings,” so if you are not paying attention to what is going into your mind, then you are also disconnected from your feelings. I can be really great at the physical, mental, and emotional, and not so focused on spiritual. Or I can be consistent with my spiritual rituals and slip way from eating well or reading something positive on a daily basis. The one thing to remember is to be gentle on yourself. We do not have to have a perfect combination of these elements all the time, yet to raise our Joy Factor, it is best to pay attention and make choices that keep us moving towards having some of all of these elements in our life. Nanette: What is the “power of gratitude” attitude. How does it help us find more joy? Wendy: Things don’t always happen the way we want them to, or what we want does not manifest quickly enough, or we compare ourselves to others. These can quickly take us away from feeling happiness or contentment in our life. But sprinkling some gratitude into your attitude can shift your perspective. As you put your attention on what you are thankful for, then you can more easily remember that everything happens the way it is supposed to, which may let you be more patient. Being thankful and happy about what is in your life right now creates the perfect foundation for you to attract and manifest what you desire. Having a gratitude attitude is a practice, one that you must be conscious of and do each and every day. What are you thankful for right now?

Nanette: Letting go sounds simple but it’s often one of the hardest things to do. A lot of us are control freaks and we want things a certain way. How does letting go, or not letting go, affect our joy factor? Wendy: I am with you about control. It is not a bad thing to want things to happen a certain way – that is the first step in manifesting your desires. The key here is to let go of the attachment of how it shows up in your life. When we adopted our second dog, Eli, he and Abbey experienced love at first site. It was amazing. But we gradually noticed that Eli was getting more aggressive. One day he got away from me and attacked a little dog—he did not hurt the pup, but we decided, under duress, that we needed to get rid of Eli. I sent an email to my peeps about finding a home for him, and five minutes later a colleague called. She told me that if we wanted to keep Eli, she would help us with him and we realized that Eli was not aggressive, he was actually a big scaredy-cat. Two things happened here—I let go of how we were going to remedy this situation. If I was stuck on getting rid of Eli, we would not have been open to working with my friend. And, as I let go of my view of Eli, I was different around him and he became different. Now I know how to deal with him and he feels much more secure here. We are all very happy together.

Nanette: If people could choose one thing to start with to increase their joy factor, what would it be?

Wendy: It all starts with choosing to be joyful and happy. So many people spend more time on what they are going to wear, going to eat, or where they’ll go on vacation, than choosing to create more joy in their lives. The Joy Factor Quiz [in the book] will point you to which of the four ingredients would be best for you to weave into your recipe to raise your Joy Factor. The key here is to be gentle and easy on yourself as you shift into being more of a conscious creator. From there, you will live a life you love!

Nanette: Thank you so much, Wendy, for taking the time to share your thoughts and philosophy. It’s been such a pleasure talking with you. I have so many things to put down on my gratitude list and I’ll definitely be Making Stuff Up whenever I need to get out of a rut.

For all of you who can’t wait to get more joy, The Joy Factor Recipe Book is available at The Joy Factor for $19.95 plus shipping. And don’t forget to try out my chocolate truffle recipe in Chapter 8.

I’d like to welcome my dear friend and life coach, Wendy Watkins, owner of PassionFruit Creative People Growers. Wendy has coached hundreds of individuals and business owners to attract the perfect customers, achieve more success, feel fulfilled, and reach the next level of joy. Her passion for helping people always makes me feel as if I can accomplish anything.

Wendy: Yes. If they desire it and choose it, Joy is there for the picking.

Nanette: I want to start with some general questions about the writing process, then segue into specific questions about finding joy. First question, why did you decide to write a book? Wendy: When I became a professional coach in 2000, I knew there was a philosophy, a personal message, which I wanted to share with my clients. I was not sure what it was, so I held the intention, continued my learning journey, and supported people in living a life they loved. In 2008 I was invited to speak at a conference in New Orleans. The title of my talk was The Joy Factor. Shortly after that, it dawned on me that this was what I was supposed to share with the world.

Nanette: What kinds of doubts did you have about writing?

Wendy: I am a woman with a vision, a philosophy, and a story. Not a great writer. Being able to express myself was easy; making it grammatically correct was challenging. My weekly writing group would critique the heck out of my punctuation and sentence structure, which brought on a lot of doubt about writing a book that people could understand and enjoy. Completing it took a lot longer than I thought. But even when circumstances brought me to a screaming halt between March and August in 2010, I knew if I gave myself the time and space, I would start writing again and complete the project.

Wendy: My first files are dated in August of 2009 and it was published in April of 2012. When I was in the groove, I shuffled to my computer every morning and wrote for a few hours. I was blessed with the time and space to retreat to friends and family member’s homes to write for a few days at a time. In the last six months of the project, I did write every day, almost all day. It became like a job and it felt good to stay focused and productive. Nanette: I’m so thrilled to be one of the contributors in your delicious book. When did you decide to ask different people to contribute recipes to the book?

Wendy: Great question. My editor, Rebecca, told me that the book was full of great information, yet I needed more stories —people love and learn so much more from stories. So I started writing stories. A couple of days later, she reminded me that I had a blog filled with posts from my Joy Posse, all about the four ingredients that I share in my book. There were the stories right under my nose. At that time, I decided to invite a few other people I respected to add their recipes for joy. I always knew I wanted some type of illustrations in the book as well, but was not sure where I would source those from. Then it hit me, ask all of your artists friends! I love the collaborative feel of the book. Nanette: Let’s talk about having more joy. In the first chapter you list the four main ingredients to achieving joy: Authentic Expression, Connection to Your Passions, Self-Care, and Strategic Optimism. How did you come up with these ingredients? Wendy: I spent the majority of my life looking for joy and happiness outside of myself. When I decided to give up all of the external substances I had been using and abusing for years, that I thought made me happy, I embarked on a journey to see what brought me sustainable joy. The kind that lasted after the buzz wore off, the cookie was gone, or the shoes wore out. What I noticed was when I was connected to my passions (what brought me the most fulfillment), when I expressed myself authentically, took care of myself, and had a plan for my joy and happiness, it was oh so much easier to be happy. That does not mean I did not have days that I felt emotions like sadness, anger, frustration and despair. But when I wove those ingredients into my life on a regular basis and allowed myself to experience the full range of my emotions, it got easier and easier for me to be joyful on a consistent basis.

Nanette: Strategic Optimism is such a great phrase. What is it?

Wendy: Optimism is how we choose to see the world and strategic means to have a plan, so Strategic Optimism speaks to being conscious of how we see the world and being intentional about choosing that view each day. If you do not have a plan, you may not be living life to its fullest potential—yet only you know that. The qualities of this type of plan are going to be different for everyone. The essence of this ingredient is to first choose joy and then determine what is needed to support you in being able to see the world in a positive way. My plan includes paying attention to what I watch on television, what I read, and who I spend time with. Nanette: You have a wonderfully creative acronym called MSU. What is MSU and how do you use it?

Wendy: This came from a coaching class I took ten years ago. MSU means Make Stuff Up. In life everything is made up and we do the making up. We choose our thoughts and from there our feelings, reactions, actions, etc. This is what all conscious creators can use to create a life they love.

Nanette: Tell me more about responsibility and the “ability to respond.” What is one simple way people can change their ability to respond that will affect a positive outcome?

Wendy: Breathing. So many times when something happens or someone says something to us, we tend to respond as we always do. When we can take a minute to breathe, to breathe in patience, understanding or compassion, we are in a much better place to choose our responses.

Part 2 will continue with more questions and answers about bringing joy into your life. For all of you who can’t wait to get more joy, The Joy Factor Recipe Book is available at The Joy Factor for $19.95 plus shipping. And don’t forget to try out my chocolate truffle recipe in Chapter 8.